


Ad Astra Per Aspera

by SockFightChampion01



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Basically millennials in space, Both are wildly unprepared for responsibility, Both of them just want to take naps, Brother and Sister - Freeform, F/M, Family-centric drabbles, Friend-centric drabbles, Hang on tight we're going down, Have different fathers, He's a Sith, He's my favorite, I love her too though, Interesting family dinners, Jakal Legacy, Kids share a mother, Necessary family roadtrips, She's a Jedi, Some stand-alones, Will probably be several sad stories here, Will probably center more on him, totally necessary, what are tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 05:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SockFightChampion01/pseuds/SockFightChampion01
Summary: To the stars through difficulties.We were but stardust, riding in the wake of a comet's tailLost amongst the stars, my dear,We fizzled into nothing in the darknessForgetting, in our broken way,How vibrantly we burnedHow stunningly we shoneWhen so briefly we lit up the night,A supernova- glowing and burstingFor all the galaxy to admire.And when we did, you saw the terror in their eyes, but I saw the reverence...





	Ad Astra Per Aspera

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first drabble I have written, pretty much ever aside from a little fan fiction contest I did once a couple years back. This particular one is dedicated to my little Sith Inquisitor, who you will find I adore above all my other OCs for SWTOR. He is my child and I love him, but for some reason I just get the feeling that (the way I played him, at least) he's a sad sort of character. I have a lore for both of them completely planned out, but it's not going to be addressed here and now. Clues will be dropped here and there, but I have a complete story revolving around them both when they realize they are related.  
> However, my inspiration comes and goes and I find I prefer to write short bits like this to a longer work. Even with this it may be some time before I update, unless my creative streak holds out and I can keep going. I haven't written anything for my Jedi recently, but I'll try to have the next piece be for her.  
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy this and don't cry too much.

Assassin

He was just an assassin.

He was never meant to be anything else.

It's dark in the storage room he takes shelter in. Dark and slightly cold. Damp too, thanks to the condensation that occurred naturally on the cavernous walls before the base was drilled into the side of the mountain.

But he doesn't mind the dark. In fact, just like the storage room, he takes shelter in it. There are nooks and crannies everywhere in the darkness, hidey-holes no one can see. He feels safer in the darkness than he ever does or did in the light.

In the shadows he's hidden. Safer. No one can see him, not even himself. In the light, he is exposed- put between a microscope and a heat lamp to be scrutinized. People had told him that the light could be cleansing; maybe it wouldn't wash away everything he's done, but it might help him cope.

So far all it's ever done is blind him. Blind him and make him feel uncomfortable and hated and _wrong_. He doesn't like being looked at like there's something wrong with him. Especially like it's something he should fix but ignores, like he wore his shirt inside out.

He was just an assassin.

He was never meant to be anything else.

That's what people don't understand about him, he thinks. They don't understand that the darkness is where grew up, even if he didn't know it. The darkness was where he was dragged first, made into a shadow himself by association.

They don't understand that he isn't his fault.

He didn't ask for this. Didn't ask for any of it. Didn't ask to constantly feel like a piece of dirt scraped off the bottom of the lowest scum of the galaxy's boot. Didn't ask to feel like a bug under a hot magnifying lens, his every move studied and criticized. 

And yet that is what he feels like.

He doesn't belong with them, any of them. They are all stars burning brightly in the darkness of the galaxy, shining on through the endless night and giving everyone and everything hope. He knows he's not a star, not like them. He won't stand the test of time and live on in the hearts of the galaxy's inhabitants- good, bad, or ugly -until one day, thousands of years from now, they are forgotten and no more than stories.

He is more like a comet. He will burn brightly for a time, flashing through history and leaving a trail of fire and chaos and destruction in his wake. Ultimately, he will reach an abrupt end. Unlike the others, he won't last.

He was just an assassin.

He was never meant to be anything else.

So he hides. He is strong in front of them, plays the leader they want him to be in the meeting room and on the missions, but when they return, he hides.

He hides away from them and the light, the light that so desperately calls to him and so mercilessly ridicules him, and he cries.

He thinks about how he has gotten this far. He has fought, scraped, clawed, and suffered to get to where he is now. Stepped on his fair share of toes. He's killed people, definitely; a great deal of them murdered. Far too many were simple casualties. More than he can ever hope to count. 

But he remembers them.

They haunt him, but not as badly as the betrayals he's suffered, which lurk like vicious, black-hearted ghosts in his every waking nightmare. He's had too many people turn on him. Too many people he thought, believed, he could trust. His first master, too many contacts who he'd been on pleasant terms with, and various acquaintances.

He knows he trusts too easily, but its a hard habit to break. It's a bad habit for an assassin, he knows, and he's certain it will get him killed one day.

Even now, he thinks, he has too many people he trusts too easily. He knows they don't all trust him, but they extend the benefit of the doubt, regardless of how wary they are of him.

Most of them don't even know why he's their leader- they all think it, even him -but they go along with it, at least, and follow his orders. Then again, what does he know?

He was _just_ an assassin.

He was never _meant_ to be anything else.

Deep down, he knows they can sense the darkness in him. It really should be no surprise. Even the non-Force users can practically smell how all-encompassing it is in him. The light simply fills in the cracks, the tiny hairline fractures within him that make- 

_Made_

-him a heretic in the Sith Empire. Maybe that was what Revan had seen in him, the propensity for wielding both darkness and light. He had been the first to encourage him down that path, but it had been Satele who gave him the final shove down it.

It had felt like running through fire.

He hated the light because it scraped away his boundaries and shields and left him raw, his sins bared for all the universe to see. He hadn't wanted to know if the universe was repulsed or not, so he'd desperately clung to the shadows, his element, and buried himself in it despite being told to let go.

But it's hard to let go of the only thing, the only life, he's ever known.

So he doesn't change. He has never changed for anyone or anything before, really, right? Why should he start now? Let them follow or let them leave, those who wanted to stick around and help would.

He knows his logic is flawed. He has changed. A long time ago, a lifetime it seems, he was a slave. A good-hearted and loving boy with a family; two adoptive parents and ten adopted younger siblings to look after. They had been his world, his calm gentle world, that never spread further than the borders of the slave camps or the endless corridors of the ships where they worked to scavenge parts.

But now he is gone. Long since destroyed is the innocent, kind, and gentle boy who thought nothing could go wrong in his life as long as he stuck to the rules. He was subverted by a cold facade of ruthlessness and malice. His walking staff was taken from him, replaced with a scarlet double-bladed lightsaber, with which he struck down instead of built up.

The tattered and shredded up remnants of that boy still hide underneath it all, shivering and terrified. Terrified of the new world he has been and continues to be thrust into. Those shards of his innocence reassemble and come out in these moments of weakness in the darkness, when none can see him and his outer shell is peeled away. It reveals how broken he is, how damaged he has become. 

He is barely twenty-seven years old.

The darkness is his protection, his security, in this moment and when the time comes he will leave it, but for now he will remain here until he feels strong enough to walk out into the alliance base and play the leader once again. For the galaxy. For Lana. For anyone else who holds even a shred of belief in him.

_He was just an assassin._

_He was never meant to be anything else._

Then again, thinking that, he was never even meant to be an assassin. He was a slave. He'd been trained simply, quickly, and efficiently with the other initiates to become skilled enough in the use of the Force to survive his trials, and then he was on his own.

He was molded into a ruthless killer by his training overseer and later his first master. He was made to be a minion, nothing more and nothing less. He would do other's bidding. Do the dirty work. Take out the trash.

Henchman.

But then, they realized he was smart. Clever. Too clever for their own good. They all realized too late.

So he rose. The position of "more than assassin" came upon him slowly, his titles piling up one by one without any real recognition on his part. Apprentice. Lord. Conqueror of Corellia. Darth.

Outlander.

Commander.

He isn't a leader. He isn't ready for this. In his mind he's still a henchman, just an inquisitor. 

His whole life has happened so fast. He is certain he's lived like a flash-bang: living fast and loud, but for only a minuscule amount of time. In no way does he see himself living to see old age. Death will come upon him suddenly, from behind if he's not careful. 

Still, sitting in the darkness on the cold, damp floor of the storage room, he steels himself. He is Vaanko Jakal, Sith Inquisitor, Assassin, Lord Kallig, and Darth Nox- Dark Lord of the Sith. He is not ready to be everything they want, or need. He is not inherently good, inherently a beacon of light. Born in shadow, he knows he will die in it.

He curls his hands into fists, what little determination he has left steeling his bottle green eyes, and he rises once again. Beyond his little space of silence and obsidian blackness, there is a war raging. An emperor who will not die, and two children who need to be brought to their knees. He's good at putting people in their place, he's done it before.

He _is_ an assassin, and always will be.

He _wasn't_ meant for anything else, but what choice does he have?

He will keep fighting. Regardless of what others think of him. He will keep trusting. Regardless of betrayal. He will love and he will hate. He will rage and he will cry. No doubt he will mourn.

And he will keep fighting. He will keep fighting and never stop.

Not even if it's what's drowning him in the first place.


End file.
